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Until Justice Is Served

Jeffrey MacDonald in 1970, after the Army dismissed charges against him in the murder of his family. He was later convicted of the killings in a separate federal trial.Credit
Bettmann/Corbis

Wilmington, N.C.

THE defendant, Jeffrey MacDonald, is 68 years old. He’s sitting on the left. He looks gaunt, and he’s shackled at the ankles. The prosecutor, Brian Murtagh, is sitting on the right. He has devoted a significant portion of his adult life to keeping Mr. MacDonald in prison, and at 66, he has come out of retirement to assist here. Judge James Fox, 83, is presiding. He slumps in his seat, interrupting only to ask a rare question. But he’s wired to the clock. Click. Twelve noon. Time for recess. He might interrupt a witness midsentence. Click. Three o’clock.

Mr. MacDonald is once again challenging his conviction for the 1970 murders of his wife and two young daughters. It is now almost 43 years since his family died. Guilty or innocent, his life has been destroyed.

I was in the courtroom because I had just published a book arguing that Mr. MacDonald’s 1979 conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice. Why? Because crucial evidence was withheld by the prosecution: files, lab notes and particularly evidence concerning the one witness who could corroborate Mr. MacDonald’s version of what happened.

One of the first responders, Ken Mica, had seen a girl standing alone in a deserted area blocks from the crime scene in Fort Bragg, N.C. Mr. Mica was responding to Mr. MacDonald’s emergency call and didn’t stop to question her. But he soon made a connection between Mr. MacDonald’s description and the girl he had seen: the two closely matched.

Hours later, Prince Beasley, a narcotics cop, had heard Mr. MacDonald’s description broadcast on the radio and immediately suspected one of his drug informants, Helena Stoeckley, the 18-year-old daughter of a lieutenant colonel. It wasn’t long before Ms. Stoeckley began confessing that she had been in the house the night of the murders.

But at the trial in 1979, Helena Stoeckley said that she didn’t remember that night. Why had Ms. Stoeckley changed her story? In 2005 Jimmy Britt, a retired deputy United States marshal, came forward and provided an explanation. He said that he had heard Ms. Stoeckley confess to being in the MacDonald house during the murders and that he later heard prosecutors threaten to indict her if she repeated her story on the stand. After years of delays and appeals, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had ordered this hearing so that Mr. Britt’s claim could be considered “in light of the evidence as a whole.”

That means everything. The totality of the evidence:

The confessions of Ms. Stoeckley and her then-boyfriend, Gregory Mitchell, about their part in the murders; physical evidence in the MacDonald house that supported their story; unexplained DNA evidence — all of it could finally be heard.

But in Wilmington, various federal marshals claimed that Mr. Britt was lying. They disparaged his character. He was a womanizer, an alcoholic, a cheat, an ingrate who even refused to accept a retirement party. It got pettier and pettier. But the prosecution couldn’t prove that Mr. Britt didn’t hear what he said he heard.

The government also called to testify two of the prosecutors from the 1979 trial: Jim Blackburn, who, Mr. Britt alleged, had threatened Ms. Stoeckley, and Jack Crawley, an assistant. Mr. Blackburn was later disbarred for embezzlement, among other things. Why should I believe the prosecution over Jimmy Britt?

I don’t, and here’s why. Helena Stoeckley was in Raleigh for Mr. MacDonald’s trial, from Aug. 14, 1979, through Aug. 23, 1979. During that time, she confessed to at least four people. This is on top of the prior statements she had made to many other people about her involvement in the murders. Why not confess to Mr. Britt, as well? There are photographs and film footage of them together at federal court. It would be more unusual if she had not confessed to him.

Now one more name can be added to the list: Jerry Leonard.

Mr. Leonard had been appointed Ms. Stoeckley’s attorney a few days after her testimony in 1979. Now he was waiting in a witness room day after day to testify. Ms. Stoeckley had repeatedly asked for immunity and was never given it. Her communications with Mr. Leonard were the only instances where she could speak freely without risking prosecution.

But attorney-client privilege extends even after death unless a judge decides otherwise. At the hearing, Judge Fox allowed Mr. Leonard to testify. On a Monday morning, a week after the start of the hearing, Mr. Leonard took the stand and recounted what Ms. Stoeckley had told him on Aug. 20, 1979. (Mr. Leonard’s affidavit and other case material are available online.)

He recalled that Ms. Stoeckley had eventually confessed that she was at the MacDonald house at the time of the murders. That she belonged to a cult. That Mr. MacDonald had been targeted because he discriminated against drug users in his medical practice, that Mr. MacDonald’s wife was pregnant and that the cult associated newborn babies with the devil. They broke into the house, things got out of hand and the men she was with committed the murders.

Four decades of accumulated evidence, including evidence once suppressed by prosecutors, has cast serious doubt on Mr. MacDonald’s guilt. Mr. MacDonald, who turned 69 on Friday, has always insisted on his innocence.